The present invention relates to data storage system and management thereof.
As noted in Japanese Patent Laid-open Publication No. 2000-305720, a hard disk drive (“HDD”) monitoring system with a graphic user interface (“GUI”) is used to manage the status of HDD. On the GUI screen, it is possible to display and monitor the following: the HDD RAID group constitution, an HDD including a designated logic unit (“LU”), the RAID group display, and the HDD failure.
As noted in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2001-222385, technology for lighting an LED associated with the HDD to give notice of a failure is described. The LED attached to a storage device provides information about the operating status of a HDD. That is, whether the HDD is operating normally or is experiencing problem.
As the number of HDDs installed in disk array devices increases, e.g., 100 or more HDDs, it has become increasingly complicated to replace problematic disks or upgrading older generation of disks. In a single disk array device or storage subsystem, virtually identical disks or HDDs are provided in a matrix of 10-20 rows by 10-20 columns. In addition, the HDDs associated with one RAID group are generally dispersed randomly within the storage device. Accordingly, there is a risk that a maintenance administrator may erroneously remove a wrong HDD and cause an unintended storage failure. Such a risk is unacceptable since the reliability of the disk array devices is paramount. Therefore, it is desirable to provide more reliable means of replacing HDDs provided in the disk array devices.